Focused Activity: He Sent His Son

Idea 1: Match Game

I am going to play the Match Game at least one Sunday this month. Mount the pictures onto all the same color of construction paper. Have a picture with a line all on one side. One for each line, separate the question from the answer. Put them up face away from the children. Have a child come up and pick two, do they match? If so, sing that question and answer set. If they don't know, have them sing the whole song, then identify if they went together. If you put the question set that has 2 questions (What does he ask? What do the scriptures say?) up twice, there are 6 (12 squares), also to get 6 you could have a "you pick a song" to match to another "you pick a song" to get 6 squares. Since Sunday is Valentines day, I decided to mount my pictures and lines on hearts.

Idea 2: Sing the Answer
Or it could be called 'sing the question'. This idea came from singing "A Child's Prayer". The older children love singing songs where they do an echo, or sing a different times (favorite is boys separate from girls). By doing an activity where we split who is singing each part will get them more involved waiting for their part. Here are some ideas of ways to split it up. Each example can be flipped- answer/question also.

• You sing the question, then have them sing the answer. You'll be silent during that part- listening to them only.
• All adults sing the question, then the children sing the answer.
• Pick one class to sing the question, everyone else sings the answer.
• Boys sing the question, girls sing the answer.
• Left side of the room sings the questions, Right side sings the answer.
• Give them the answer and have them tell you the question.
• Anyone over a certain age sing the question, all under sing the answer.
• Pick a select group of children to stand at their seat to sing the question, everyone still sitting sings the answer.
• Anyone waring _______ sing the question, everyone else sings the answer.

I'm sure you can think of many more.

Idea 3: Fill in the blank
I know this one is other there a lot. I normally don't like to do it with the JR primary because I think all the words are too hard for them, but I think this song really lends itself to it. Write on it only write words that are the SAME for other lines, leave a blank for each different word. Write the missing words on stripes of paper that are cut to fit perfectly on the blank lines. Fill in the blanks, if the word is unknown where it goes sing the part of the song it belongs to and see if the children can remember where it went after they were done singing.

The other way this could be done is to only put the unique phrases and words on the board. Then have the common phrases on the strips. Have the strips color codes to what type of phrase it is ie: "How could the Father" could be red, while "He sent his Son" could be written in blue, and I did the small words (tell, show, ask, us, we, with, and) in purple. Go through the song and have the children match which lines goes in that blank. Make the blanks the color (marker or I used construction paper) of the strip.